Re: General Theory-- German Edition

["Gunnar Tomasson" <tomasson@xxxxxxxx>]

Harry:

In 'The Keynesian Revolution' (2nd ed.), as I recall it, Lawrence Klein
called Keynes an apologist for bourgeois economics who had, inter alia,
charged that the Soviet economic system was based on "religion" whereas in
fact it exemplified the essence of the Keynesian System sketched in the
'General Theory'.

In the preface to his work, again as I recall it, Klein acknowledged his
intellectual debt to Paul Samuelson and thanked Don Patinkin for helpful
comments on 'The Keynesian Revolution' in draft form.

Against this background, I found it incongruous to see Patinkin later
depicting Keynes as an apologist for Nazi totalitarianism whom he - by the
same token, an apologist for Soviet totalitarianism - found it hard"to
forgive".

Gunnar


> This was posted on another list.
> Does a similar statement appear
> in any English editions of
> the _General Theory_?
>
> Harry Veeder
>
> -----------------------------------
> If were going to get into specific quotation from _General Theory_, I
might
> as well remind people of the most remarkable sentence in Keynes' striking
> comments in the foreward to the German edition of 1936:
>
>      Trotzdem kann die Theorie der Production als Ganzes, die den Zweck
>      des felgenden Buches bildet, viel leichter den Verhaltnissen eines
>      totalen Staates angepasst werden als die Theorie der Erzeugung und
>      Verteilung einer gegebenen, unter Bedigungen des freien Wettbewerbes
>      und eines grossen Masses von laissez-faire erstellten Produktion.
>
> The translation provided by Beebe, Narjes, and Martin is:
>
>      The theory of aggregate production, which is the point of the
>      following book, nevertheless can be much easier adapted to the
>      conditions of the totalitarian state than the theory of production
>      and distribution of a given production put forth under conditions
>      of free competition and a large degree of laissez-faire.
> -------------------------------------
>
>